Aristide Dumeny was almost strangely different—an ashy-pale, dark-eyed, thin and romantic-visaged man, stamped with a curious expression of pain and fatalism. He looked as if he had seen much, dreamed many dreams, and suffered not a little. There was in his face something slightly contemptuous, as if, intellectually, he seldom gazed up at any man. He watched Mrs. Clarke in the box with an enigmatic closeness of attention which seemed wholly impersonal, even when she was replying to hideous questions about himself. That he had an interesting personality was certain. When his eyes rested on the twelve jurymen he smiled every so faintly. It seemed to him, perhaps, absurd that they should have power over the future of the woman in the witness-box.
That woman showed an extraordinary self-possession which touched dignity but which never descended to insolence. Despite her obvious cleverness and mental resource she preserved a certain simplicity. She did not pose as a passionate innocent, or assume any forced airs of supreme virtue. She presented herself rather as a woman of the world who was careless of the conventions, because she thought of them as chains which prevented free movement and were destructive of genuine liberty. She acknowledged that she had been a great deal with Hadi Bey and Dumeny, that she had often made long excursions with each of them on foot, on horseback, in caiques, that she had had them to dinner, separately, on many occasions in a little pavilion which stood at the end of her husband’s garden and looked upon the Bosporus. These dinners had frequently taken place when her husband was away from home. Monsieur Dumeny was a good musician and had sometimes sung and played to her till late in the night. Hadi Bey had sometimes been her guide in Constantinople and had given to her the freedom of his strange and mysterious city of Stamboul. With him she had visited the mosques, with him she had explored the bazaars, with him she had sunk down in the strange and enveloping melancholy of the vast Turkish cemeteries which are protected by forests of cypresses. All this she acknowledged without the least discomposure. One of her remarks to the cross-examining counsel was this:
“You suggest that I have been very imprudent. I answer that I am not able to live what the conventional call a prudent life. Such a life would be a living death to me.”
“Kindly confine yourself to answering my questions,” retorted Counsel harshly. “I suggest that you were far more than imprudent. I suggest that when you and Hadi Bey remained together in that pavilion on the Bosporus until midnight, until after midnight, you——” and then followed another hideous accusation, which, gazing with her observant eyes at the brick-red shaven face of her accuser, Mrs. Clarke quietly denied. She never showed temper. Now and then she gave indications of a sort of cold disgust or faint surprise. But there were no outraged airs of virtue. A slight disdain was evidently more natural to the temperament of this woman than any fierceness of protestation. Once when Counsel said, “I shall ask the jury to infer”—something abominable, Mrs. Clarke tranquilly rejoined:
“Whatever they infer it won’t alter the truth.”
Daventry moved his shoulders. Dion was certain that he considered this remark ill-advised. The jury, however, at whom Mrs. Clarke gazed in the short silence which followed, seemed, Dion thought, impressed by her firmness. The luncheon interval prevented Counsel from saying anything further just then, and Mrs. Clarke stepped down from the box.
“Isn’t she wonderful?”
Dion heard this murmur, which did not seem to be addressed to any particular person. It had come from Mrs. Chetwinde, who now got up and went to speak to Mrs. Clarke. The whole court was in movement. Dion went out to have a hasty lunch with Daventry.
“A pity she said that!” Daventry said in a low voice to Dion, hitching up his gown. “Juries like to be deferred to.”
“I believe she impressed them by her independence.”